Kites of peace. What unites mediators from the Vatican, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Europe
12.03.2024The game of mediation helps Russia to erode the Ukrainian peace plan, пишет Vladyslav Girman, an observer of the international policy department of "DS".

Pope Francis
While some European countries, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, are raising the stakes in the confrontation with Russia over the narrative of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, certain players are lowering the stakes for their own interests, and are also consciously or unconsciously fueling the Kremlin's campaign aimed at geopolitical deconstruction of the Ukrainian agenda in the context, in particular, of the Peace Formula.
In the last few days, proposals for holding peace talks between Ukraine and Russia against the background of the political crisis on Washington's Capitol Hill have been heard from the mouths of influential representatives of a number of states. Some of them are ready to organize platforms for hypothetical negotiations.
For example, to a new but fruitless attempt to play peacemaker, China, which has its own business leaders from the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine and its confrontation with the USA and Europe, resorted. Why did he send special representative Li Hui on a shuttle-diplomatic tour to Ukraine, Russia and Europe.
Intermediary services were also offered by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who insists on the participation of Russia in such negotiations, if they suddenly take place on the territory of his country.
However, this is not the first time he does this, and again, not the first. Back in August of last year, the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, proposed to organize a meeting between the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, and the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin. According to him, at the request of Pope Francis, who, we note, the other day once again marked himself with scandalous statements about "white flags" and negotiations, voiced in an interview with the Swiss TV channel RSI (the full version will be released on March 20).
By the way, if Switzerland has already been mentioned, where this year the Global Peace Summit will be held, then back in January, the head of the Foreign Ministry of this country, Ignatius Kassis, also called on Russia to be included in the discussion of the Ukrainian peace formula. However, Kyiv's position regarding the participation of only those countries that support the territorial integrity of Ukraine turned out to be stronger, and also in January, President Viola Amherd stated that the Russian Federation is unlikely to participate in the event. So the mediation between Ukraine and Russia in Switzerland also did not work out.
Next. It is possible that Saudi Arabia also seeks to compete with Erdogan and Zayed in this matter. A month after Zaid's statement, KSA Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud directly spoke about it from the podium at the UN. And at the end of February this year, a Russian delegation led by the head of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Volodyn and the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky visited separately (February 26 and 27). After that, some dubious resources, in particular tZE Inform, according to informed sources of the "DS" affiliated with the Russian special services, began to spread information about the alleged transfer to Zelenskiy personally by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia, Faisal Al Saud, of Russia's proposal for the settlement of the "military conflict". This same resource very timely claimed on March 11 that Zelensky in Istanbul, they say, agreed to consider these proposals.
Benefits and Russian interests
Each of the above-mentioned geopolitical players who aspire to play the role of a mediator and find themselves at the origin of a hypothetical truce has their own interest in this. And many of them one way or another earn money for the war waged by Russia against Ukraine; or incurs losses due to the sanctions regime.
Erdogan, for example, hopes to strengthen his political position in the region and the world in this way. In addition, Turkey, which receives good income from the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, will benefit even more in the event of a freeze of the conflict, since this scenario, first of all, does not exclude a partial weakening of the sanctions pressure on Russia, which means that it significantly reduces the risk for Turkish business fall under secondary sanctions; secondly, the freeze will provide for new defense contracts between Ukraine and Turkey.
The United Arab Emirates, through which one of the routes for gray exports to the Russian Federation runs, could theoretically receive similar deals. As for Saudi Arabia, as a member of the oil club, democratic countries are, in principle, an extraordinary phenomenon. Well, we have noticed a noticeable rapprochement of the Saudis with China recently, which, of course, has an impact on the foreign policy of Riyadh.
The Pope is influenced by the ego of the congregation, most of which is in the countries of the Global South (primarily in Latin America).
But all of them, without exception, make a serious mistake — they still consider Putin's regime rational. More or less rational, such that, despite aggressiveness and cannibalism, will not decide to seize such a large country as Ukraine by force. But, unfortunately, we have already become convinced that common sense is not about Russia.
Therefore, now Ankara, Riyadh, the Vatican, Abu Dhabi, pursuing their own interests, also provide considerable assistance to the Kremlin in the process of leveling a clear Ukrainian course towards the end of the war with the restoration of sovereignty over our territories and the punishment of Russia for crimes committed by means of the intentional defragmentation of its pipeline of initiatives and offered together with the promotion of the narrative that Russia, they say, will not lose anyway.
And it is worth noting that some European and American politicians are helping the Kremlin with this. In particular, of course, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian colleague Viktor Orbán, who this weekend went to the United States to strengthen their positions with the help of demonstrative flirting with Donald Trump, and also after the meeting noted a number of anti-Ukrainian statements that Trump in case Election victories will not help Europe and will not provide funds for military assistance to Ukraine.
However, we, and even Orban, cannot know this for sure. But, probably, it is possible to state that similar statements in symbiosis with various "peacekeepers" are extremely beneficial now to Russia in its attempts to destabilize Europe and prevent its further consolidation in the matter of supporting Ukraine up to more decisive steps in this direction.
Moreover, as demonstrated by the data leak obtained by Ukrainian hackers from the mail of Roman Seitkaliev, deputy director of the Russian Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, Alexei Kuznetsov, and provided to InformNapalm, Russia... this, by the way, is about the "rationality" of the Russian leadership. So, Russia is really preparing for a new world war, and as part of this preparation, its top designers and ideologues have come up with a new feature - the "de-Westernization" of Russia, which provides for victory in the war with Ukraine, and further distancing itself from the "collective West" in the direction of escalation with it and maximum totalitarianism in Russia. Actually, Putin declared all this during his speech before the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.
That is, by playing along with Moscow now, the above-mentioned politicians and leaders are harming not only Ukraine, but also themselves in the near future.
Read also on Newsky "Nose to nose. What does Nuland's resignation indicate and what does the election have to do with it? and look at Boring Pence YouTube channel.
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